Human 'sense of space', moving images and architecture

The paper discusses possibilities and restrictions of the representation of built space in film and virtual reality. The presenter's approach combines phenomenological analysis, reference to traditional theories of aesthetic experience and more recent neurocognitive insights. The 'sense of space' is constituted by multimode sensory stimulation changing according to the organism's movement relative to its environment. As a starting point, the paper considers some disturbances of the inherited interplay of vision and movement that take place while /watching cinema or being immersed in 3D virtual reality. The perceptual situation provided by moving images in many cases produces disorientation and dizziness. The presentation will focus on the impact of the visual flow produced by 'point of view shots' in the cinema and analogue scenes in virtual reality on the human 'sense of space' and state of consciousness. Whereas the moving pictures — in a certain respect — can make appropriate use of the resulting dizziness and disorientation, these mediaeffects are not welcome in the context of the representation of built space. Movie-makers (intuitively) learned how to counterbalance potentially disturbing effects that the visual flow produces by means of the movement of the camera. For several reasons the most important 'antidote' to the effect of the movement of the camera seems to be the depiction of moving objects (animals/machines) relative to the background of the scene. The strategies used by makers of commercial fiction-films to minimize disorientation of the film-viewer hint to some possible ways of improving the design of virtual reality and films that aim to represent built space. *** NOTE: Both Dokument 1 and Dokument 2 are of the same content. They only differ with regard to the quality of the embedded video stream and hence their filzesize. Watching these streams requires both Adobe Reader (at least version 7) and up-to-date video codecs. HINWEIS: Dokument 1 und Dokument 2 sind inhaltlich identisch. Sie unterscheiden sich nur in der Qualität der im Dokument enthaltenen Videosequenzen und daher auch in der Dateigröße. Zum Abspielen der Videos sind neben einer aktuellen Version des Adobe Readers (empfohlen ist mindestens Version 7) auch aktuelle Video Codecs erforderlich. ***